Perhaps they could get their website to work

BT has lost the plot

BT and its forebears have been maintaining the copper network for over 100 years. if they haven't worked out how to do it economically by now what hope is there for the rest of the business given they can't manage computer systems either? If you're a phone company surely this is core?

And remember when Railtrack used contractors - Potters Bar and Hatfield. Potential for service to suffer to bolster the profits of third parties with no link to the end customer and buttressed from feedback by BT Indian Call Centre staff.

as the old saying goes

Ofcom pathetic

I listened to teh interview with the head of Ofcom today - all talk no action, denies the rest of the world are better at it than the UK. And the figures used were doctored to be as if there was no line distance lag - real amounts would have been far less. I'm on 1.4Mb/s today, way up on my usual 700-900k due to distance from the exchange. Who cares which ISP I use, none of them can offer me high speeds and Ofcom will (costing us a bomb) continue to dither and procrastinate whilst the rest of teh world shows how broadband should be done

Photograph without fear of arrest

Oddly webcams for Chatham on the BBC site and weather-forecast.com sites don't work but go to http://www.lordswoodonline.co.uk/localwebcam.htm and there's a lovely picture of Rochester High Street just up the road (sorry) courtesy of Medway Council.

Hooray but

I have never had a good experience of using the sub-contractors in India but if BT is going to implement that standard for UK based staff heaven help us.

They have Residential Service teams in Northern ireland, Chairman's Office high level complaints in Cardiff, Directory service in Shrewsbury and Directory Distribution Service in Dundee. Notice how far these customer service operators are from the seat of power in London?

Rumour is though that a building in Essex is undergoing refurbishment for more staff. But perhaps all companies (Listen 3) should have rules that say customer service staff must have English as their first language and that they have to use (endure?) the company's services in their private lives

Malware infecting a dictaphone?

They miss the visiting population

We have rubbish mobile in parts of Wensleydale as we have hills and the permanent population isn't large. But the transient population numbers millions as we're a tourist centre. It hasn't occured to mobile operators that their customers get fed up when on holiday and they can't use their phones as they've not unreasonably chosen to holiday where not many people live

It's selective

Won't worry me

I'm a 3 customer with an expiring contract coming up but they won't pester me - they have such lousy coverage here that I have to be standing at the bottom of the garden to use the mobile or 12 miles away to use the 3g internet dongle. oddly nobody's mobile works in our pub.

Could this be the same for software?

BT didn't learn from its own experience

In the 1980s BT developed what was then the largest IT system in Europe with its Customer Service System. In the pilot District it wrote off millions due to an inability to bill for many months and delay followed delay initially. BUT they finally achieved rollout and it appears much of the original design is still in place. The trick was change control - if it wasn't a show stopper they didn't do it. And as it was designed by the most experienced users they could find and then checked with the rest of the user community, the specification was generally of a very high quality in the first place.

Get better landlords/owners

I've moved from the South to the North. Here every village - even places without a village - seems to have a thriving pub unlike where I came from. They serve good beer (5 on pump here) good inexpensive food, aren't owned by a faceless company determined to wring the tenant dry and have landladies and landlords who create an atmosphere that attracts all ages to make the pub the heart of the village. I can drop in at any time and be assured an interesting chat with people of all (legal ages). Dogs are welcome as well. They orhganise socials and even the vicar is having a service at Eatser there. Come to the Fox and Hounds in West Witton and see how a pub should be

The Ryanair approach

BT has repeatedly used the Ryanair approach to fleecing customers. It's all in the small print. Perhaps is they acted like an honest comapny without these tricky contracts, charges for paying the bill and a host of other bits and bobs people would want to use them - and their share price might get back to somewhere near flotation. Livingstone used to be Fincnace Director for Dixons/Currys/PC world - says it all

So how are they are managing power?

Will BT help spread of 3G?

Now if BT could put a few more aerials up on telephone exchanges for their partners' networks those of us in more remote areas might finally be able to use mobiles and even 3G services. My exchange is 3 miles away - rotten broadband - my nearest 3 aerial 20 miles!

However I find the statement that 3 and T mobile share networks odd. In one place recently where no 3 signal available, Virgin (on T Mobile network) was strong. Where I live 3 is non-existent and the switch that 3 recommend is to Orange with whom 3 have a deal.

So sad

As an ex-employee (and pensioner) of Nortel I find it so sad that the company has got into this mess. When I worked for them (we were taken over) there were a predominance of US rather than Canadian senior execs who managed by Powerpoint. I taught for a year their Quality Improvement programme only to find that many (not all) of the guys at the top couldn't care about it - several joined British Gas/AA after leaving Nortel curiously . Great products, some amazingly clever staff - Harlow, the inventors of fibre optics in STC days had more PhDs than Cambridge University it was claimed - but when I worked there the awful management laid the foundations for what the current management has inherited.

They need to know everything

When will we all be chipped so that MI5 can see exactly where we are - it would mean that the Intelligence(?) Agencies would have even more data to fight terrorism. Then there's the TV that watches you - sorry, George rwell go there first.

Who would you believe?

Sad

Ofcom highlights the silent call menace but are adamant that banning the equipment that creates silent calls, the autodiallers, is not on - it may upset the very people making the silent calls like Barclays did.

Makes up for Freeserve

Five has not been a great Freeserve supporter so I suppose this is their way out. When the switchover happens, many transmitters will not provide the Five channels at all (wonder if their advertisers know?). Here in N. Yorkshire, whilst I can get almost all Freeserve channels, Five and Fiver signals are so poor as to make watching impossible.

Verified by Visa when the bank fouls up

Just moved. House has had the same name for over 160 years but depsite telling the bank the correct spelling they used a corrupt Postcode Address File and changed one letter in the house name. Result - payments refused as stated address did not match registered address of card. Same corrupt PAF in use by DVLA - though not by Royal Mail oddly

Shredders

30 day rule

My largest customer insists on taking almost exactly 30 days for every invoice. This really annoys when the job being charged for is deemed urgent by the customer - work is urgent, paying a small company manyana. The FD thinks he's pulling a fast one. But he pays more than the customers who pay more promptly

Wizards of Pooks corner

a sci fi story from the 60s where the army is beaten by a group of guys with shotguns because their arms were so new and complicated they couldn't work out how to use them properly. This may be truth becoming like fiction.

But what if the speed is just lousy

BT claim I should get 0.5Mb/s being around 6km from the exchange. Router sees betwwen 900k and 1.6M and I average around 959k. No amount of fiddling with the wiring will boost my speed. BT needs to address the issues of basic line speed .

The Unreal deal

The Real deal is full of errors. Take calls to 0762 numbers - they claim they're radio pagers which is news to mobile phone users on the Isle of Man. Admittedly 3 claim to charge a lot more than the International rate they actually charge - it's just off the Lancashire coast for Pete's sake - but it seems they just can't get their Real Deal agreement to match reality

It's not inevitable

Anyone who has to pay for an incoming junk call/wrong number when abrod knows that paying for incoming calls is unacceptable. The sooner netwroks realise that paying each other great sums of money that tend to cancel each other out just to fatten artificially balance sheets and slip a bit of invisible profit on the better. Let's have free access and an honest estimate what, if anything, it would actually cost operators.

Pay for incoming calls

Oh No -not more junk

Tried to put my views but committee email rejects. I have yet to meet any marketeer that themselves like double glazing sales phone calls or junk mail but they always talk about a 2% hit rate as if to justify the 98% they upset. I talk about people like me who make it a policy never to buy anything that is advertised by invading my privacy through junk means without my permission. All they'll do is ruin Bluetooth as a useful tool.

07 is the problem that Ofcom won't address

Ofcom has failed to create reanges beginning 07 where the cost of a call is obvious up front. Take 0764 for example - numbers in that range have been allocated to non EU operators and hence many netwroks charge international call rates. When challenged to provide a list of codes they had alocated to non EU operators Ofcom said they couldn't but my mobile operator, 3, said it was up to me to know that the mobile I called was in fact an Isle of man one, non UK, non EU.

Focom's not really there for us

Two recent brushes with Ofcom have convinced me they are there for the supplier until they really really get pushed. Firstly on silent calls they refuse to ban autodiallers as it may upset the people using them to make silent calls. they're happy to fine the companies if enough people complain but stamping out the problem of companies calling vulnerable people on their own and then hanging up in the first place seems beyond them.

Secondly they allocate UK phone number to non UK/non EEC countries and then telcos charge unsuspecting callers international rates. When I asked Ofcom for a list of mobile codes they have allocated to the Isle of Man - 07642 but there are other codes I believe - (3 charged me for an international call in total disregard of their published price list and Berkshire Trading Standards are not asking them why), not part of the UK or the EU oddly - they said they hadn't got one and it was up to the customer to call their phone company before making a call to check the charges. Great advice Ofcom.

With an organisation so top heavy making them do anything requires a lot of force to overcome the inertia and complaining to Ofcom seems a waste of time.

What's the problem?

Having been ripped off 3 times by on-line fraud I applaud the verified by Visa process - in fact I pestered my bank to introduce it. Anything that makes it safer to buy online must be a bonus. And site owners want it to protect themselves as they have had to carry the cost of fraud and hence had to reflect that cost in their prices.

I haven't seen any adverse security issues with the scheme anywhere. Why the resistance?

There goes my bank as well

Unreal profits

If only mobile operators would look not at what they charge others but at the balance at what they charge foreign roamers against what they recoup from they're own roamers. If charges for roaming only reflected the difference between these sums then they'd be lower. As it is, whilst some holiday destination countries do benefit overall most operators have a reasonably close balance between in and out roaming costs/charges across Europe and all these charges do is pad the balance sheet - they're not real profits just inflated turnover.

Why should charges go up?

If every phone company is paying every other phone company termination charges then surely they cancel each other out. The biggest operators get the biggest income but also have to pay out the most and vice versa. So the turnover will drop but the net effect on profits will be zero. Or am I missing some vital piece of high level economics